“Is There No God in Israel?” 2 Kings 1 --CEFC 2/23/20 (Read 1 Kings 22:51-2 Kings 1:18) ______

1 Kings 19—Sermon: 1 Speaking Truth to Power: The Prophet Elijah, #7 “Is There No God in Israel?” 2 Kings 1 --CEFC 2/23/20 (Read 1 Kings 22:51-2 Kings 1:18) ________________ After several weeks focusing on the failed rule of King Ahab, this morning we return to the prophet Elijah. Elijah—do you remember what his name means in Hebrew? “My God is the LORD, Yahweh.” Elijah--“My God is the LORD.” His name almost shouts out with the question— “So who is your god?” This is the question that Elijah’s ministry posed to the people of Israel in his day, and it is the question it poses to us in our day. Who is your god? I’m sure most people here this morning would say, “Oh, that’s easy. My God is the God of the Bible. My God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. My God is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And that’s a good answer. 1 Kings 19—Sermon: 2 That’s the right answer. Yes, that is the answer in our heads, but is it really the answer in our hearts? “My God is the LORD,” may be easy to say, but is it true? And how would you know if it’s true? Martin Luther addressed this question in his Large Catechism which begins with a reflection on the first commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me.” “That is, you are to regard me alone as your God.” Luther asks, “What does this mean, and how is it to be understood? What does “to have a god” mean . .?” Luther’s answer is this: “A “god” is the term for that to which we are to look for all good and in which we are to find refuge in all need. Therefore, to have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe in that one with your whole heart.” “As I have often said” Luther writes, “it is the trust and faith of the heart alone that make both God and an idol. If your faith and trust are right, then your God is the true one. Conversely, where your trust is false and wrong, there you do not have the true God. 1 Kings 19—Sermon: 3 For these two belong together, faith and God. Anything on which your heart relies and depends, I say, that is really your God.”1 So how do you know what you trust in for your good, and what you look to as your refuge in time of need? It is really hard to tell when all is well— when life is good—when you health is no problem and all your bills are paid. But all of life is not like that— and for none of us will life be like that all the time. The question is, What will you trust in then? What will you look to when you encounter a real need— when your nice, secure, stable life starts to fall apart? Where will you put our trust when your health fails, or you lose your job, or your family falls apart, and the fragile nature of your life is laid bare? Who is your god? Is it the LORD, the God of the Bible— or is it something else? That’s the question raised by Elijah’ ministry in Israel and that question comes to the fore once again in our passage this morning, 1 Martin Luther, Large Catechism, “[The First Part: The Ten Commandments],” The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert; trans. Charles Arand, et al.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 386. 1 Kings 19—Sermon: 4 as we pick up the biblical narrative at the end of 1 Kings 22. ------------ 1 Kings 22:51. King Ahab is gone, and some might say, “Good riddance!”, but in his place is his son Ahaziah. And our writer clues us in from the start about what to expect from him in the story that follows— 1 Kings 22:51— “Ahaziah son of Ahab became king of Israel in Samaria in the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and he reigned over Israel two years. 52 He did evil in the eyes of the LORD, because he followed the ways of his father and mother and of Jeroboam son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin. 53 He served and worshiped Baal and aroused the anger of the LORD, the God of Israel, just as his father had done.” He was, as they say, a chip off the old block. Ahaziah “did evil in the eyes of the LORD, because he followed the ways of his father and mother.” Parents, just consider this for a moment. Now hear me carefully when I say, it is certainly not always the case 1 Kings 19—Sermon: 5 that children follow in the footsteps of their parents, but it is a pattern that occurs often enough to make us take stock of our own lives. Are you living in a way that you want your children to follow? Little eyes are watching, more than you may realize— They see the way you relate to your spouse— is it kind or is it harsh? Are they seeing a healthy, loving marriage or one that is fractured and full of friction? And those eyes see the way you relate to your god— and they see what your god is— in the way you spend your time and your money— and where you go in times of need. Are you serving and worshipping some idol, or it is the Lord, the one true God of the Bible? Ahaziah “served and worshiped Baal and aroused the anger of the LORD, the God of Israel, just as his father had done.” Parents, the stakes are high, so beware. Ahaziah followed in the footsteps of his father and mother— Ahab and Jezebel-- and so the behavior our writer describes in what follows will not surprise us. ________ 1 Kings 19—Sermon: 6 But before we get to that, our writer inserts one point of interest regarding international relations— 2 Kings 1:1—"After Ahab’s death, Moab rebelled against Israel.“ Nothing else is said about this insurrection, and we may wonder why it is even mentioned. Israel’s relationship with Edom will be picked up again in chap. 3, but why it is referred to here? I suspect that it is simply further reinforcement of the failure that results from following false gods. Earlier, back in v. 47, we are told that King Asa’s relatively righteous son Jehoshaphat, king of the southern kingdom of Judah, was able to maintain his control over Edom, but here Ahab’s Baal-worshipping son Ahaziah loses that control.2 The Biblical writer underlines wherever possible that we live in a moral universe, and a refusal to give the Lord God the worship he is due will have its tragic consequences. We dare not forget that. _________ But in v. 2 we get to the main story illustrating that truth, a story involving a tragic fall— a tragic fall in more than one sense. 2 So Provan. 1 Kings 19—Sermon: 7 “Now Ahaziah had fallen through the lattice of his upper room in Samaria and injured himself.” Falling from a second story window is no small matter. In the book of Acts we read of a young man named Eutychus who fell asleep while Paul was preaching, and he fell from a third story window, and he died. Only a miraculous act of God saved him (Acts 20:9) (which should be a warning to anyone who even thinks about falling asleep during a sermon!). But Ahaziah only fell from a second story, so he didn’t die, but suffered severe injuries— injuries that were, as we’ll see, life threatening. This is the inciting incident of the story. So what is Ahaziah’s reaction? Does the king of Israel cry to the LORD, the God of Israel, for his mercy to save his life? No, he doesn’t. Instead, Ahaziah “sent messengers, saying to them, “Go and consult Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, to see if I will recover from this injury.” Ahaziah in his time of need appeals to “Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron.” Ekron was one of the five cities of the Philistines 1 Kings 19—Sermon: 8 located on the coast. Ekron was foreign territory. And the gods of the Philistines were foreign gods. The name of the particular god Ahaziah wants to inquire of may sound familiar. It’s found in the Gospels, but with a variant—either as Beelzebub or as Beelzebul. And there, this god is referred to by the Pharisees as the “prince of demons,” and by Jesus as Satan himself (Mt. 12:24f). Baal-zebul, which means “lord prince” may have been this god’s Philistine name, but Baal-zebub, which means “lord of flies” may have been the name given to him by the Jews-- a kind of degrading, even mocking, corruption of the name to better express their opinion of him. In any event, as Ahazaiah lay in bed, in desperate straits, this is the god, this is the power, he looked to for help. “he sent messengers, saying to them, “Go and consult Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, to see if I will recover from this injury.” This is the king of Israel, remember— he was the king of that nation chosen by God to be his light to all nations— Israel was his covenant people to whom the Lord had revealed his holy law and whom he had rescued from slavery in Egypt with a mighty hand in parting the Red Sea.

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